I recently was listening to Alan Alda's podcast Clear and Vivid, in which he interviewed Kate Bowler.  At 35, Kate was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer.  She describes the tone that people adopt when talking to someone with cancer.  She says,

...I would love it if people just took a minute to watch someone else interact with someone in brief, because there’s a tonal shape to the conversation I find really interesting.
There’s the approach and then someone goes, “Me-meh-mehmehmeh.” It’s like acknowledging the sad thing, and the person goes, “Muh” and matches them there. Then they’re trying to get out of the conversation, so they try to whip it up a bit where they’re like, “Mu mu mu, mumuMUHmemuh.” And that’d be usually the point where they pivot hard to minimizing or like, “And a bright new day. Best wishes! Peace out.” Out. 

I am thinking that an alternative way to do this type of activity would be to ask participants to think about a conversation that they have had many times and see if they can describe it in the way that Kate describes this conversation.  In this way, they could concentrate on the tone involved in communication rather than the actual words.

Of course, you could also use the voice of the Peanuts adults as an example, too.